Cellar Door
by somandalicious
Summary: Her love is the finest of insanity. Idiosyncratic and wistful. --- HGDM


It is a matter of semantics, when she thinks about him. When her nerves are rushing with a candent flame of toxic desire that pools in a sinful ache at her mons. It makes her pull at her skirt and rub her trembling thighs together, creating friction but never quelling the wicked need that beads sweat on her skin.

_Semantics._

It's only natural, though. He is the epitome of her perfect man. Handsome, successful, athletic, articulate and educated. He is enigmatic.

Although he is often terse with her, he pins his eyes on hers and she is assaulted with vulnerability, reflection, and a tsunami of other unidentifiable emotions that she can't quite decipher.

But it all means something.

A something she is afraid to label because she isn't sure if she believes in that flavor of nonsense. She doesn't believe in fate and destiny and soul mates and serendipity. She believes in cold hard facts, free will and good choices.

Realistically, he is Draco Malfoy and she is Hermione Granger, and that means he cannot be the Proverbial One, if there is such a thing. Factually, she cannot have him.

But that only makes her want him more. In all the ways a woman wants a man. Deep inside her flesh, bone and soul. To twist her and stretch her and claim her as his own.

It makes her believe he is her soul-mate, destined by fate, and it is merely serendipity that she is a witch. A chance that put her into his world so that she could meet her Proverbial One.

But that is semantics

- - -

Her heart memorizes him.

She works in the same department at the Ministry as a Liaison for the Wizengamot. He ignores her, but she watches him. She has always diligently studied him, a habit she had acquired at Hogwarts, but now she can focus on the smaller traits of his behavior. The simple, everyday things that really doesn't matter to anyone in particular.

He takes his tea with three lumps of sugar—but no cream—he prefers his quills stripped, and he flirts innocently, unabashedly with the elderly witch in Accounting. Just so she'll bring him homemade banana-nut muffins.

He bites his fingernails. Or, for a more apt description, he gnaws them down to the nail bed. He is most contemplative then.

He wears collared-shirts under jumpers because he doesn't care for the constrictions of neck-ties, and when it rains he fancies using the Floo.

When he believes she isn't paying him any mind, he stares at her legs, and once at an inter-department party, he told her she had a fine arse. Her skirts are now shorter and tighter.

Every third Saturday, he meets with Blaise Zabini for a pick-up game of Quidditch and that's the one chance she is allotted to see him relaxed in the liberties of irresponsibility and laughter.

Where he is brilliant and astounding.

She goes where he goes, she is where he is, because if she's there, he might see her and know that she is made for him. That they are perfect for each other.

She is dressed in her finest, her face painted carefully, her hair arranged strategically, and she is ready to be seen.

But as he passes through the crowd of the gala, the witches turn to watch him saunter by and they swoon at the devilish smirk supercilious upon his debonair face.

Draco Malfoy doesn't see Hermione Granger, and her grip tightens on her champagne flute and it cracks.

Like her glass heart.

- - -

Her reflection tells her that she is pretty and she almost believes it. She stares and thinks that it really doesn't matter. That it shouldn't ever matter.

She is just a normal, pretty girl, like a hundred thousand other normal, pretty girls in the world. And she is so smart, so clever and just so interesting. She knows this. She knows she deserves better than him. That she deserves someone who will see all that she is. Will see how odd and lovely she really is. On the inside. Because that is what matters. Personality. It is pivotal.

Like Achilles' Briseis, she is fair-cheeked. Her brown eyes and her brown hair are like mud. Stygian mud. And she wonders if he was right all along. That maybe she isn't worthy of his affection, that maybe she is crazy for thinking she belongs in his world. Maybe she is filthy and convoluted and sick. And it is so easy to believe that. So much easier to believe that he is out of her league than to think he just doesn't want her. That he doesn't like her. That she isn't pretty enough or interesting enough for him.

It is just simpler.

But while she is thinking that it all doesn't matter, and while she is trying to convince herself that she doesn't really belong with him, and that things like fate and destiny and soul mates and serendipity are banal ideas to cling to instead of hopelessness, she is thinking something else. She is planning. Her trifling connivances transform into desperation, and she finally decides on the one way to a man she once swore she'd never consider.

It will be easy, really, because she is so smart and so clever and just so interesting that no other wizard or witch of her age could possibly achieve it. But she can. Because Hermione Granger does belong in Draco Malfoy's world.

Her reflection leers like the Cheshire Cat.

Her love is the finest of insanity. Idiosyncratic and wistful.

- - -

It took her three months, but it is time for her stratagem to manifest. She is proud and fierce as she waits for him in Diagon Alley.

It is like a meet-cute in a movie. The scene is set, the actors are at their cues and the film marker claps and its action. She is browsing the flowers on the cart as he enters stage left. She points her wand at him covertly and nonverbally casts the spell.

_Amavimia._

Then she waits. And just as he nears her, she turns into him as if on accident, and they collide. His hands support her elbows and she pretends she is ashamed of her self, as if she is courteously apologetic, as if "Oops, I should be more mindful of myself."

Their eyes meet. She blushes and he grins.

"Hallo Granger," he says. "Fancy seeing you here." He thinks she looks pretty. "Like Achilles' Briseis," he says. "Fair-cheeked." He buys her a daisy and proffers her his arm and she knows bliss and attainment.

Then it is a whirlwind of fancy dinners and luxurious gifts and golden valentines.

She plays hard to get.

"I'm not that type of girl," she flirts. But he kisses like Beelzebub wrapped in satin and he is cavalier by every definition, and it makes her heart thunder like Thor's hammer and her tummy whirls like dervishes and her skin wants to combust like wildfire.

She is just so aware of him. It's extra-sensory. And she knows that soon her resolve will break.

Then it's a pretty ring and Sunday cuddles and afternoon snogs.

And their romance is peculiar, twisted and lovely.

- - -

The darkness creeps in unexpectedly. He's waiting at her flat, at her door. He is confused and tired and angry.

She is tentative.

Her hand is shaking as she unlocks the door. Her heart is pounding as she steps over the threshold. Her lungs are tight as he follows her silently, and her mind is anxious as he kicks the door shut.

His glower burns through her back and she doesn't want to turn and face him. But she does. Because sometimes she is braver than she thinks.

And he accuses, he yells, he breaks her bones with petty stones and sticks, and it is all so terrible, but she takes it because she feels guilty. She feels wretched. She feels as if she couldn't possibly ever feel as low and sick and dirty again.

But then his diatribe breaks into a frightened plea. "Tell me, love, tell me why this thing between us feels so peculiar, twisted and yet lovely."

And she crushes her lids closed and she decides that this is low and sick and dirty. That she is everything he had ever accused her of being. She is filthy and hateful. She is ashamed. She is wrecked. Because she cannot tell him why their love is peculiar and twisted and yet lovely. So she doesn't.

She kisses him.

She pushes him with all her moxie and shoves him against the wall. Because sometimes she is more cowardly than she can ever imagine.

His mouth is candent and eager as if in the sensations found in her mouth are the answers for which he is so desperate.

She can only taste his bitterness.

Her fingers tremble as they pull at the soft cashmere of his jumper and when her palm slides to his flesh she can feel his agitation.

A gasp and his lips slide the column of her neck.

She is mindless and cannot focus and her hands are on their own accord as they push and pull and divest and score.

His mouth returns to hers and it bruises. It punishes. And soon her tentativeness has quelled and her guilt has abridged. Suddenly she finds herself coasting on a wave of thundering, edacious passion and it consumes her being.

Still, she covets more.

More of his handsome, swollen lips.

Of his fumbling coarse hands.

His fierce keenness.

Then the world tilts in his favor and with a strong arm around her waist he hoists her and twirls her and slams her to the wall only to outrage her spiraling libido with a languid grind of his pelvis. "Yes," he growls hotly into her ear and she can only reply with a satisfied whimper.

Before she can recover, his hand is pushing roughly at her ribcage and her skin is sparking against the calluses on palm and it ignites her nerves like a flint against stone. But up and up it keeps moving until it reaches the curve of her breast and squeezes boorishly and she cannot seem to swallow the aching pant of excruciating delight.

A long salacious lave is all he will allow for a salve.

She mews in gratitude and her fingers dig into his shoulders for leverage, for closeness.

He is never too soft in his caresses. They push and pull and twist and stretch and claim. And she drinks it up. She feeds on it. On this powerful throbbing of affection and yearning. This is her love. This is where it manifests. This is how it becomes real.

And she's trying to think about everything she feels, to catalogue it and label it, but it's like a kaleidoscope. All wonderful and lovely colors melting into an enigmatic burst of stimulation. Where it can't be catalogued or labeled. Where it is just what it is. Stimulation.

It is all over her. On her face, on her breasts, on her stomach, on her thighs. And all she can think or do is just oh, oh, OH. Because it is on her knickers, and it is just so very close and she no longer wants it on her. She wants to soak it up into herself where she hopes it will never go away.

But then, it is soft. So delicate that she thinks she is imagining it. That his fingers aren't just where she wants him and that his thumb isn't softly teasing that extra-sensory bud of skin.

It's twirling and teasing and sensual and her entire being is tightening and constricting and her bones are threatening to push through her skin. Her toes curl. She chokes on her moan. Her eyelids are wide shut. Her mouth is thin. Teeth clenched.

Then he kisses her tenderly and pushes himself into her.

Deep inside her flesh, bone and soul where he twists and stretches and claims.

Hermione Granger comes undone around Draco Malfoy.

There is no rebound for her, no time to savor the sweetness of bliss for he is rocking quickly against her, his fingertips gripping her hips with a bruising need, guiding her into his tortuous lust.

Still, he wants more.

More of her exquisite skin.

Of her pliant comfort.

Her candent surrender.

So she gives. And he takes. It is a battle of narcissistic gratification until he becomes rigid in his euphoria.

She takes. She wraps him up into her self and soaks up his spirit until together they slide to the soothing carpet. She hushes him and consoles him. Because sometimes she is more compassionate that she is allowed to be.

With rose-colored vision she can only see elation, because it was so good. So thrilling. So tritely mind blowing. So good.

Through the haze of the aftershocks there is a niggling and it reminds her with insomnia that their lovemaking was too good.

Too good to be true.

And the dawn offers no solace.

- - -

Her contrition is monumentally astounding. Eccentric and undeviating.

For almost a month he has been withdrawn and strange in a suffocating tristesse, and she doesn't want to acknowledge why. But it is there, a small seed deep within the caverns of her conscience, telling her that the bewitchment isn't so perfect. That she forgot the most important aspect. That the spell feeds off of her wants and desires. And with her warring consciences, it is failing. Rapidly.

And it is depressing, heartbreaking, devastating like a Greek tragedy. Evoking trepidation and opprobrium. The stage is pied in whimsical masks of mocking stigmata. And she stands on her mark, lost and lonely, as the players move around her. She wishes she was like the fair-cheeked Briseis returning to her Achilles. It is all confusing, traitorous and unfair. She's drowning in it, her idiosyncrasies, and with a leap of faith she reaches out and calls for him.

Their eyes meet. She pales, he frowns.

And she knows that her role is all wrong. She is Achilles taking her unwilling prize, Briseis of Lyrnessus.

And just like the epic odyssey, this is not real.

This is not true love.

And like Achilles, she has a weakness and it is her good will and humanity and it makes her break, makes her give up. It makes Hermione Granger release Draco Malfoy from the confines of her enchantment. It makes her honest.

He is cruel.

"You're a thief," he tells her. And he calls her malicious names, he says the naked truth. He tells her that she is sick and wicked and trash. His eyes are mean and his face is terrible. His fists are clenched and it looks to her as if he is caught somewhere between crying and punching, and she is afraid to see either. She can't stand to see him so ruined.

She was trying to save him, she says, to give him a chance to find real love. She can only acknowledge her selflessness.

A little too late, he thinks, and he hates her. He never wants to see her again.

And he leaves her.

Alone. Forever.

Her melancholia is immeasurable. Dark and stygian.

- - -

There is familiarity in her reflection.

A portrait of a girl she used to know but she cannot place when or where. A girl who was once pretty. Who was once normal. Like a thousand other pretty, normal girls. But this girl isn't pretty or normal. She is sick and convoluted. She hurts people for her own pleasure. She takes what is not given. This girl has an ugly soul and it radiates from her eyes.

She wears her shame on her sleeve. It is red and sinful. Ugly. Dirty.

And it matters. It matters because this isn't about appearances, this is about personality and nobody wants to love an ugly, hateful sociopath. It's the burning truth, and it is so incredibly easy to understand. To believe. Because those things matter. They matter more than knowledge and wit. They matter more than vanity and quirks. They matter because they destroy people.

They hurt.

She is afraid, she thinks, as her hand falls to settle on her flat stomach. She is afraid that she won't ever be loved. She is afraid that this is her last chance to find out.

Because at the end of the day, this being inside her, sharing her life-force, her magic, her cleverness and passions, is the only thing in the world that will truly belong to her. That she can truly love. That will hopefully love her back.

This is her last chance for something else too.

To start over. To apologize. To get back on her feet and start all over again. It is a chance for Hermione Granger to redeem herself in the eyes of Draco Malfoy.

But she has something important to do first.

And her mirror watches as hope returns in a flood of tears.

- - -

Her eyes remember him.

The angle of his jaw, the length of his nose. And her fingertips recall the feel of his cheek. She laments.

With an indecipherable expression, as if he can't decide whether to invite her in or turn her away, and while he is hovering somewhere in between, he begs the reason of her presence and she is stunned because he didn't slam the door in her face. His irritation grows at her speechlessness, and it rolls off of him in waves of tragic disappointment.

Her apology is direct and she lifts her chin in determination. She stands proud and fierce.

He nods, but his jaw flexes and her shame returns and her fear is engulfing. She shrinks back. Because she knows what is coming. What he is going to say.

But before the storm thunders, she blurts with panic, "I'm pregnant."

For a moment he is taken aback. He is surprised, and she thinks she sees a bright lift in his grim expression. It is fleeting though, and she deduces it was her wishful imagination.

He regains his brutality, telling her to rid the world of her impudence, of her disgrace. That the child was conceived in her error and will be a stain upon humanity. He slams the door in her face. He is callous and cold.

But she doesn't care and is glad that he is, at the very least, aware of the reality out there. Because she is keeping it. She is clutching to this body of hope and chance because it is her salvation and it is something to live for.

For the first time in what seems ages, Hermione Granger finally believes that she doesn't need Draco Malfoy to belong in the whole wide world.

She vows to turn her bad into something good, and she will love this child and care for it and raise it to be better than its parents could ever think of being. She has too. Because this is good. This is true. This is real.

And her eyes glisten with fortitude.

- - -

It's a matter of pragmatics, when he is standing on her foyer with a friendly greeting. Seeing him there makes her heart clench painfully, and her body is shrouded in a googolplex of tingly goose pimples. Her throat constricts, and she is tightening into a ball of unyielding panic. It is so heavy on her shoulders that she drops her mug and stretches her fingers, rolling her shoulders to ease the tension. It is futile.

_Pragmatics._

After all, he told her to stay away from him. That he hated her and wanted nothing to do with her, and he hoped that their unborn child perished by divine intervention.

So it is only natural that she is wary of his being there. Even more than she is confused by it.

But his drawl is awkward and his disposition is nervous, and she deduces that this is good. That this means he will be kind to her. This means that he has something to tell her and she may be pleased to hear it.

But his hands are fumbling and he can't turn his focus from his polished loafers.

She quietly asks why he is at her door, and he tells her that he doesn't know.

But she knows he has to, that he is fully aware of the force that led him to her door. She tells him so because, "Why are you here after you said all those things?"

And he can finally meet her critical gaze and he tells her. He lays it all on the table because he is just so confused. And he doesn't think he likes her but he can't seem to stop thinking about her and he is pretty sure that the happiest he had ever been is when he was with her and that it doesn't make any sense to him whatsoever because it was all wrong. It was peculiar and twisted and lovely and he misses her. But he knows that it wasn't real. That it was some sordid beguilement and he shouldn't ever feel this way. But he does. And he came because he had to see her.

She becomes afraid that he is only here because of the baby, that he is trying to stand up and do the right thing. That he is trying to save face and rectify the consequences of her misleading. She doesn't want him for that. She doesn't need him. She can do this on her own and she tells him all that.

But he is very much aware of her independence and her abilities, and he reassures her that the baby is not why he is here. "I missed you before you told me about the baby," he tells her. Because he hadn't come to terms with his emotions. He hadn't fully acknowledged his wants and desires. He was trying to bury them because it was all wrong. But it was too overwhelming. And want turned into need, and need burned into desperation, so here he is. To see just her.

And she just stares at him, numb, because she cannot comprehend what this means. What his intentions are. So she watches his movements and gestures, trying to figure him out, and she is so close but she can't quite put her finger on it. This is not unusual, though; he has always been her favorite puzzle.

But then, "I want to take you to breakfast," he says.

And it is so unexpected that she doesn't believe what she is hearing and she is suspicious and, "Why?" she says. "Why breakfast?"

"Because it is more intimate than lunch, but not as formal as dinner. It is strange and awkward and beautiful. Like us."

And he grins. But she blushes.

And Hermione Granger realizes that Draco Malfoy wants her in his world. She isn't sure how, and it isn't necessary to figure that out now. He may not be the Proverbial One. And she doesn't have to believe in fate and destiny and serendipity because all that doesn't matter.

Because this is real. This is true.

And it is stated so simply, but it means so much, and that is just fine with her. She doesn't need more than this right here, right now.

Because that is pragmatics.

- - -


End file.
